One who has abandoned attachment to the fruits of work and remains ever content and dependent on no one but God, such a person ? though engaged in activity ? does nothing at all, and incurs no K|rmic reaction. (4.20)

He has no clinging He knows that results Are not in his control He is ever satisfied He depends on nothing He is always busy Doing something and yet He still is a non-doer all the time.||4:20||

We just finished discussing inaction in action. Krishna goes on to explain this further. The binding factor to karma is our attachment to the fruits of our actions. We are looking for happiness in the results. This is normal. We depend on results for our happiness. The million dollar question is that do we find the happiness or fulfillment in our life with this approach.

If you find happiness then there is nothing else to do. Krishna knows that we are not happy as we are. We are not tripta (fulfilled) as we are. I worked hard for my high school examination. I passed. I got second position in my class. That is pretty god. I get home and mum finds out that I came second in class. The first position went to the daughter of a friend of my mom’s. I thought mom would be happy because she had me first and her friend’s daughter second. But, was she really happy? You guessed it right. She was so disappointed. Her son has been beaten. She had always boasted so much about his son with her friend; the same friend whose daughter has just beaten her son.

We are all looking for happiness outside. Krishna says that happiness is not outside. As long as you are looking for happiness somewhere else, you will not find it. The reason is simple. Happiness or fulfillment is not outside. Krishna says that once you stop looking for fulfillment outside, it happens itself without any need for dependence. Let us look at this part a little closer. Krishna’s words “nityatripto nirashrayah” needs close examination. We are born in a family. That is our support system. We depend on father, mother and the family for our existence. We learn to get food and shelter in the family. A child cries and mom gives him milk. A dummy then starts working as well. The child learns to get his fulfillment (milk and dummy here) from outside. He or she thinks that milk or dummy is a result of their crying. The child does not know that milk will be coming any way and it will come because of love for the baby. The mother will feed the child. That is a given. But, the child may be reaching a different conclusion. The child sees a relationship in crying and getting result. But the mother is going to be there anyway for the child.

This disconnect is so obvious. The child grows up thinking that his crying brings the result and grows up with this concept of happiness or fulfillment coming from outside as a result of his actions. The child is an adult now. The adult is also looking for fulfillment outside. He has learned that all results come because of his actions. He never saw that results are not totally dependent on his actions. Crying might have been a signal for the mother to give the milk to her child. Even if the child did not cry, it would have got the milk anyway. That learning which is the bigger truth never got to the child any way.

That is what we are all doing. We all are looking for fulfillment coming out of our actions. All we need to do is to drop thinking that. The bigger truth then starts staring in our eyes. There is a support system all the time. The child’s support system is obvious to us but is not obvious to the child. Our support system is obvious to Krishna but is not so obvious to us. Krishna knows that and that is why he says that drop this childish belief that your actions produce the total result. Accept what comes from the samashti (the whole). Drop the attachment to what you think is your support system. There is a bigger support system out there and allow it to come and embrace you. Nirashrays (no support) is only the beginning; actually that is the door to the support system of Parmatma himself. And then there is only fulfillment that exists. As we are, we only see un-fulfillment. We are looking for fulfillment in the wrong place. It is not there. Once we find the place of no-support, we come to realize that there is nothing but fulfillment in our lives.

The child has now come to realize that it has never done any work. Crying was result of hunger. The milk came out of love. It all was going to happen anyway. Krishna is not telling us to conclude that we should become inactive (akarmanya). But he definitely wants us to know deeper elements of karma yoga. We will continue our discussion in next column.